


The Loudest Silence

by twoheartsx



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Angst and Feels, Childhood Trauma, Flashbacks, It's never established how Yusaku feels about Kusanagi, M/M, Mentions Yusaku's past a lot, Nightmares, One-Sided Attraction, Panic Attacks, Psychological Trauma, this is not a happy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-19 22:58:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14882838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoheartsx/pseuds/twoheartsx
Summary: He loved Yusaku, he’d loved him for a long time now. He couldn’t say it. Not with the mission and everything on the line. Not when there was no room for love anymore.





	The Loudest Silence

**Author's Note:**

> I was randomly hit with the idea of Kusanagi loving Yusaku but feeling like he can't have him and so this came to be. Let me know if I made any mistakes I need to correct.

Love, it was such a deep and complex thing. Something any basic human could comprehend and yet, no one truly fully understood. Because there was so many types of love and often the more platonic ones were cast aside for a deep passionate romance. This wasn’t about platonic love though. 

Shoichi sat next to Yusaku. Yusaku Fujiki, his best friend and the boy he’d watch grow into a young man alongside him. Both of them growing, aching in their own way. One was grieving for his brother, the other for his own lost innocence. In some ways Shoichi guessed he himself had lost his innocence. Not in the same way Yusaku and Jin had. They’d had it ripped from them and then completely destroyed right in front of them. For Shoichi it had been something different. After his brothers kidnap he spent months blaming himself. It should have been him, he should have protected his brother better. After his brothers rescue he spent weeks upon weeks visiting him in the rehabilitation center. It broke his heart to see his brother once so full of life now so empty. His eyes were tired and glazed over. For the longest time he couldn’t speak a word. Shoichi kept visiting him and that’s where he met Yusaku. They spoke on rare occasions when the staff attempted to give Jin group therapy. The group talked about how to cope with what had happened to them. How to deal with the panic attacks and flashbacks. Jin started to make a little improvement. It took three years, but he eventually was able to speak again. Small words, short sentences, but to Shoichi it was a miracle. He was thankful for every word his little brother said. Even if it wasn’t pronounced right because it meant he was slowly getting back to his old self. 

Shoichi knew his brother would never fully recover. The doctors told him many times. After seven years it seemed that small sentences was all Shoichi would get and it tore him up inside. His guilt, the one he’d been living with since he was a child, turned to anger. A need for revenge, for what had been stolen from his brother. From an innocent child. It was around that time that he got closer with Yusaku. He’d been visiting for years, they’d talked a few times, but never got close. Until with his fists clenched, tears in his eyes as the doctors took his brother back to his room, Shoichi growled out; “I’ll make them pay for taking your life away.” He’d never been so angry in his life. 

“We can make them pay together.” Yusaku had said it while looking at him with eyes filled with tears. Because he too remembered the pain of flashbacks, of panic attacks and nightmares. Reliving the trauma over and over in his mind. The pain of his back hitting hard against the wall, his body falling to the floor. How much his stomach aches when he lost and was deprived of food. How his body hurt from the shocks and the impact of falling to the floor. Sometimes Yusaku swore he still felt the pain, all the pains that the experiment came with. 

Over time Shoichi watched as Yusaku became more and more distant emotionally. It wasn’t just with him. In fact Yusaku was the softest with him. It was more of the fact Yusaku had turned all his sadness to anger. He’d numbed himself in order to cope with the pain. He’d lived through hell and sometimes in dreams, in his mind, he was still in hell. Often he’d come to Shoichi late at night because he couldn’t sleep. He’d been alone throughout the experiment. Sleeping alone meant being reminded of that small white room where pain was all he really had. The pain of defeat and the cold, bitter loneliness. 

Shoichi felt sick and angry when he heard the details of what happened to them. To his little brother. They were forced to duel, the winner was fed, the loser starved and shocked. Defeat meant being punished. It drove the fear of defeat into the children that would stick with them well into their adult lives. It was win and hurt someone or lose and hurt yourself. It was cruel and sick. The idea of his brother going through that, Yusaku or anyone having to make that choice, it made him want to throw up. Yusaku ended up falling asleep in his arms that night after breaking down and crying. He hadn’t cried in months. He hadn’t allowed himself.

“We’re not friends.” It was a phrase Yusaku said a lot. It was his way of pretending he hadn’t grown close to Shoichi. That he hadn’t let his walls down. It was his own form of protection, but as he fell asleep with his head on Shoichi’s shoulder he couldn’t help but hope they were friends, at least something close to it. 

Shoichi loved Yusaku. He loved how strong he was. How he got up when he’d been knocked down. How he was kind and just. Yusaku was a good man and Shoichi couldn’t have him, because for them, with their mission and the dangers there was no room for love. There was no room for blinding emotions that would get in the way. So Shoichi would love Yusaku from a distance, silently.

**Author's Note:**

> If you wanna scream at me about my fics my twitter is a_mercykill I'd love to talk to my amazing readers


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